While the world of marketing is constantly changing, there is no doubt that copywriters continue to play a pivotal and strategic role in the modern age.

A lot of this relates to the large amount of content available in 2017, which has led to a crowded market where brands need to put money into smart, useful, and engaging writing to connect with their audience. Furthermore, longer content has proven to be more effective over time, with brands now preferring blog posts longer than 1000 words, requiring skilled writers to make sure this content is relevant and well-organized.

What if you want to create your own copy in order to retain a seamless and authentic brand voice, however? In this case, you will need to adhere to the following copywriting tips, in order to optimize the impact of your message and enhance the appeal of your website:

  1. Know Your Audience To Guarantee Relevance

Relevance is the single most important element when crafting content, but what many marketers fail to understand is that this can take numerous forms. Not only must the topics that you cover remain true to your brand’s purpose and core identity, for example, but it must also appeal directly to the consumer segments that you are trying to target.

Then there is the issue of topical relevance, which ensures that your content has the capacity to trend and actively engage readers in real-time (while also transcending specific audiences).

As you can imagine, creating content that ticks all of these boxes can be extremely challenging, but if you manage to achieve this you will be able to establish yourself as an influencer and a thought leader within your chosen market.

If you are serious about achieving this, you should create an annual content calendar and schedule that allows for forward planning. This will ensure that you optimize the frequency and the uniqueness of your content, while it provides you with a genuine opportunity to identify upcoming events, narrative and natural hooks that reinforce the topical relevance of every single post.

  1. Re-optimise Existing and Underperforming Content

While a content calendar may enable you to optimize the quality, impact, and relevance of your content going forward, it is also important that you show some love to your existing posts. This will help you to identify older posts that have failed to attract links or drive traffic, as well as those that have failed to generate shares through social media.

Start by auditing your content to identify which of your posts have underperformed, leveraging metrics such as shares, views and comments to achieve an accurate insight. You should then examine these posts in forensic detail, checking the content to ensure that keywords appear in the main title, at least one subheading and within the first 100 words.

There are also various opinions and a lot of speculations as to what is a perfect keyword density, with most marketers suggesting figure between 0.5% to 3%. However, since Google changed to a semantic algorithm, making your articles read naturally is probably more important than obsessing about keyword density.

This is another consideration when re-optimising, as older posts will perform better if they are updated to according to Google’s constantly changing guidelines.

  1. Engage in Competitive Research

Competitive research is another key rule that aspiring copywriters and marketers should adhere to, as this helps you to determine how individual pieces of content are performing both independently and in relation to key competitors.

This can be an extremely invaluable and informative measure, as it highlights specific areas where your content may be falling short and can inform you strategy going forward.

Some of the best tools which help with competitive research are Buzzsumo.com and Impactana.com, with the former particularly useful as it utilises complex algorithms to identify which types of content suit specific topics and brands. In contrast, Impactana uses the core metrics of social signals and user engagement level to calculate the effectiveness of content assets, both for your own brand and those who compete directly against you in your chosen marketplace.

  1. Include a Clear and Concise Call-to-action

The best content deals in specifics, both in terms of its perspective and the precise reaction that you hope to achieve from your audience. Ultimately, you will want readers to take some form of direct action after engaging with your post, whether this is to interact further with the brand or make a purchase.

In this respect, the call-to-action (CTA) that you deploy is pivotal if you are to achieve your objectives. This should be clear and developed with your objective in mind, while it must also be concise and easy for readers to comprehend. You should also avoid overly promotional or sales-like CTAs, as today’s generation of customers are deceptively savvy and increasingly likely to be suspicious of brands.

From a technical perspective, try to ensure that your CTA sits above the fold, so that it is clearly visible when customer browse your content. Similarly, you should embed a relevant link so that your CTA becomes actionable, as this enables customers to seamless progress their journey with the brand and fulfill a further, direct action.